Wichita eagle., 1887-07-22
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:la1ln Eagle
\ S 49,
SOME HINTS ON STYLE.
ADVICE WHICH MAY BE OF VALUE
TO NEWSPAPER CORRESPONDENTS.

Study Well the Style of the Paper 70
Whose Columns You Write-The Sor
of Contributions Wanted by Leadin
Journals.
Study the style of the paper to which yol
are telegraphing. Notice how much spac
it gives daily to telegraph news. Notice witt
what sort of news that space is filed. Motto
what kinds of dispatches are printed in full
and what kinds of dispatches are CONDENSED
to paragraph. Notice, more than anythin;
else, the disposition that is made of the dis
patches you yourself may send. Observ,
which OF them are printed in full, leadec
maybe, or put in a prominent place. Observ,
which of them are cut down, put into a para
graph, or edited into the waste basket.
In a short time, if you will do this, vol
will know pretty well what sort of stuff YOU
editor likes to get. If you are wise, you vii
satisfy his appetite for that sort Of stuff and
not try to improve his taste by forcing on
him matter which your own good judgmen,
assures you is better. He may not know
what he wants; few editors, perhaps, do; but
he thinks he does, and that settles the matter
as far as you are concerned. AS long as you
act as his correspondent, your own interest
Will counsel you to do as he wants you to do.
You can get your revenge, You know, by re.
gardlEg with silent contempt Judgment
that is so much inferior to yours
You can never know the sort of news a
paper wants until you study its columns every
day TO see the sort of news it prints. No one
can tell you half so well as you can see for
yourself if you will take the trouble to OBJ
serve; and you will find in the end that the
trouble you may take in getting hold of the
style OF the paper you work for will be well
repaid, both in solid cash and in the good
opinion of the editor for whom you are work
ing. After you have got a pretty definite
idea of the style Of your paper, and of the
sort OF news it wants TO receive from YOU,
You have nothing to do but to live up to your
theories as well as you can. In the case of a
paper like The Baltimore Sun or The Chicago
Inter Ocean, perhaps, this may not be diff
cult task. You must have good Judgment.
You must know solid news when you see it,
and you must judge accurately its Importance
TO the readers OF your paper. Brilliancy of
style and novelty in ideas are not required by
such papers The Baltimore Sun or The
Philadelphia Public Ledger. If you can tell
to either plain story in a straightforward
way, you will please the night editor and you
will not startle the readers of the paper into
commissions
1t is different when you have to deal with a
paper like The Chicago Times, The st. Louis
Globe Democrat, The Boston Globe, The New
York Herald or The Cincinnati Enquirer
These papers want news, too, and good news,
but they do not pretend to be moral educators
of the community. They want news of all
kinds, sensational or solid, ami they want
it writteh brightly, at some length, and with
the peculiar skill of the trained newspaper
man. None of the papers named will regard
the question of expense when there is real
news to be got. Each Of them throws away
every night at least half as much news as it
prints All of them have plenty of room, and
all of them are always crowded. There is
dnll news and bright news in all of them;
routine news that must be printed for the
conservative readers of the paper; the ordi-
nary run of news fer the general reader; and
spicy, sensational news for tho lovers Of the
weird, and to attract new readers.
The correspondent who serves one of these
papers well must keep alive all the time, and
he must be posted on everything that hap
pens, from brutal prize fight to Methodist
conference or Baptist convention A spicy
elopement case, or a meeting of scientific
celebrities he must treat at equal length, per-
haps, and each in its own way News is what
he must look for; and everything may be
news to the correspondent of such papers as
these. His dispatches, so long as they are
well and brightly written, need not be bril-
liant or profound-so far as the Western
papers named are concerned, at least They
must be full of meat. Usually they are
printed about as he sends them, or else they
are discarded altogether. So long as he makes
them "meaty," and uses good Judgment about
what he sends, lie will get along all right.
He must pursue different plan, however,
in dealing with closely edited papers like The
Chicago News or The New York Sun. Papers
like these two have little room for telegraph
news, and the news they print must be closely
aid smartly written. The correspondent who
serves them well has moro difficult task
than the correspondent of any other sort of
paper. he must have the faculty of Sizing
up" q piece OF news, of seeing at once its
salient feature. and of making complete
story, with a sensible point to it, in very few
words. l know of no better training for
correspondent than TO observe the way in
which the agile desk editor on such a paper
handles his dispatches. If the correspondent
is quick to take q hint and notices closely
how bis specials are treated, he will learn
more in q month of service than he can in
year of ordinary newspaper work; and the
training that he gets will do him good service
as far as his other papers are concerned. The
man who might exactly suit the editor of The
Cincinnati Enquirer would be discharged in
a week from The Chicago News; but the cor
respondent whose brief dispatches are printed |
exactly as he writes them in The News can
always have all the space he wants in The |
Enquirer-and he can usually fill it all, too. |
William H Hills in The Writer